Conventionally, an electronic commerce (e-commerce) website will set up various product categories in which products may be classified. Users who are registered at the e-commerce website may advertise products they wish to sell at the website by selecting the one or more categories to which the products belong. Users who wish to buy products at the e-commerce website may search for desired products using search keywords or other search conditions. Information associated with products that are relevant to the user's input search keywords or other search conditions may be returned for the user as search results.
Typically, since there might be more than one user that sells products in a particular category of products, the e-commerce website, to ensure fairness, may assign products sold by different sellers with the same probability of being found and presented among a set of search results. As a result, so long as users use the same or similar search keywords and/or search conditions, the search results that they receive may be the same. However, since each user may have a different expectation for what to see among the search results, the same search results may not necessarily suit every searching user. For example, assume that a certain style of clothing has been very popular recently. Thus, users that search for popular clothing styles may see clothing products associated with the recently popular style among their search results. However, User A may not like this style of clothing and does not want this style of clothing to appear among the search results returned for User A. In another example, assume that User C purchased something at Seller B's online shop at the e-commerce website and discovered that it was of very poor quality and that the proprietor had ineffective customer service. As a result, User C no longer wishes to purchase anything from Seller B's online shop and consequently, User C does not wish for products supplied by Seller B to show up among the search results returned for User C. If the technique of providing search results described above is used, then the same search results would be returned for different users that input similar search keywords and/or searching conditions but not every user may be satisfied with the content of the returned search results. As a result, users may acquire desired product search results less efficiently and less effectively.